States dug their hooks into exploitable aspects of human social life as early as 3800 B.C.E., using livestock herding, agriculture, sedentarism, military bands & religion as their main weapons. These examples are taught in modern curriculum to be the invention and brain child of the state; however each one existed in some form or another prior to the state. And they did so without many of the consequences of urbanization in early cities (bone/soil deterioration, epidemics, deforestation, famine, and mass murder, to name a few; which ultimately led to the demise of early states). This all culminated into a chaotic temporary entity phasing through time; collapsing every time it grows enough to speak coherently.
The speech of this monstrous entity was unlike the speech of anything that came before it in the corporeal realm. This newly evolved habit allowed the abhorrent form to maintain more and more of its tricks each reincarnation. The advantage of the state on the tombs of history, merely a symptom of the massive bureaucratic analytic structure states depend on, was that of written language etched into long lasting materials (as opposed to non-state peoples who largely relied upon oral records or if there was a written language it was written on compostable materials like reeds). As eons pass and the past crumbles into dust, the winds of time blow away the forgotten remnants to pull the language of the state to the forefront. This makes ancient state media an easy grab for any would-be archaeologist, and to see outside the bias of said state you would have to dig through tons of dust. This effect grows almost exponentially as the years progress and has resulted in absolute hegemony in history of the state. Only in the past 100 years have we really seen major attempts to dig beyond the easy state artifacts, through the dense mass of dust, to find remnants of non-state people and spending multitudes of time deciphering what truth these seemingly unrelated data points hold.
Each time these demonic entities walked the earth, even if just for a second, they plagued the very ground they walked upon, depriving stateless peoples of a literal Garden of Eden in terms of food diversity and bounty. The mass adoption of plow-based grain agriculture had an awful habit of depriving the soil of nutrients, causing harvests to get even more volatile than they were through just the process of domestication. Mass deforestation caused erosion that even changed the tides of rivers (which early states were entirely dependent on, for irrigation and transport of goods). Although this state caused depreciation in the robust natural resources once available to non-state peoples, there was an increase in the amount of footholds to maintain form on the corporeal realm longer and longer each time until they achieved systemic global hegemony; injecting itself directly into the DNA of humanity.
While gnosticism varies largely depending on the area, sect, or time period, one element rings loudly among the sea of variety: the dualism of a true god and a demiurge. Depending on the variety of gnosticism, the demiurge is either an evil god or just an imperfect ignorant god who created the false reality we resign in now. Humanity, the other gods (archons), and the universe were created by a perfect god, and humanity existed alongside gods existing as the ‘fire of man’ (perfect form). When the demiurge crafted the false reality, we were cast from the heavenly home into the material realm where we could face pain, and suffering, and hunger, and plagues, and death.
This seems like something totally contained in the realm of mysticism and religion; however, spiritual philosophy contains many ideas and answers mostly ignored by secular philosophy. Not only that, but inside the history of spiritual sects lies the earliest forms of philosophy. It is unknown as to whether the spiritual beliefs of esoteric sects was literal or metaphorical, it would not be unimaginable though; people routinely believe magic as some sort of supernatural power, whereas, historically, it was seen as the manifestation of intent. One didn’t partake in a festival for harvest, for example, to easily gain a bountiful harvest through a fantastical force. Rather, it was a sign of the contract entered between human and nature. The ritual cementing within the minds of the practitioners the need for the intense labor that was required of a bountiful harvest.
This concept of a false reality is extremely useful in terms of understanding the massive effort required in reversing the blight spread by the state. If we view the state as the demiurge, the imperfect evil god who crafted the false reality in order to trap the perfect form of humanity in the material realm, we gain access to a great metaphor describing, in topographic detail, the path before us. Gnostics believed in a process similar to enlightenment, called gnosis, that was based on peering beyond the false reality and seeing the true nature of the universe (as well as once again becoming the ‘fire of man’). This almost perfectly encapsulated the scope of the task at hand: in order to escape the state we must peer beyond the deceptive “false truths” woven into the very fabric of our systems; from science and rationalism, to political economy and philosophy, to organization and social structuring, poisoning these ideas and forms with falsehoods and hypocritical lacing. But the false reality, by definition, cannot be absolute. As much effort and power the trickster god has put into tainting analysis, there still resides truth in all aspects of the false reality. Gnostics, mostly hunted throughout history by the church for heresy, learned very early on to disguise their writings and theory (one example being early alchemists describing spiritual primitive-chemistry rituals as baking recipes). By no means does anyone need to burn the entirety of human knowledge cultivated under the state, but we need to adapt a new critical lens to analyze, in order to peer beyond the firmament and reveal the truth behind the veil.
If we look at the history of the gnostics without the ‘poison of the literal,’ we gain a new insight previously robbed of us by secular-centric philosophy. This false god isn’t a literal being, sitting on a throne up high laughing at our misfortunes; rather, it was a simple way of describing a complex monumentally indecipherable phenomenon. This phenomenon, a real life lovecraftian cosmic horror, was the state.
States by no means ascended to the thrones of history unmolested. At every turn they were put at disadvantage after disadvantage in comparison to non-state peoples. Higher rates of child mortality, widespread epidemics, wars fought for slaves in order to replace population loss due to exodus, increased workload, decreased food stability, and countless other values listed themselves in the universal cons list for statehood. Tribal structures in particular resembled a parasitic idea, growing in strength and concept in direct opposition to the state and its malevolence.
These diverse tribes represent a plethora of lost information in the war of people vs. the state. Although most were lost to the sands of time, the surviving records weave a web of resistance and success in the face of the state, mostly thriving in times where the stability of the state was severely thrown off. When the states went through crises, tribes bolstered their ranks with exiles and others fleeing state oppression, they were able to plunder trading routes for easy supplies, and they didn’t have to worry about retaliation from a state whose focus was solely directed towards not imploding.
While ultimately these systems suffered defeat in the hands of time, they represent an untapped well of thought existing solely outside of the state. If the essence of these temporal entities was once again brought into the corporeal realm, this could inspire the formation of the modern tribe, adapting and succeeding where the state fails.
The past century of the capitalization and commodification of every aspect of life has made one thing abundantly clear: the state has dug its hooks into absolutely everything that it possibly can and attempts to hide everything that doesn’t form into the abominable form of capital under the dust of time. But these gems of wisdom contain knowledge and ways of thinking antithetical to the state. This essence surely must be tapped into in order to resist extinction at the hands of this malevolent archon, thriving off the suffering of mankind.